ABSTRACT
For Freud in 1937, psychoanalysis may have been one of the impossible professions, along with teaching and politics, but it had unquestionably taken its place among the privileged occupations of the modern world. Psychoanalysts have tended to isolate themselves in their professional communities. Freud, of course, modeled this, preoccupied as he was with establishing the shibboleths that would expose the internal enemies, discriminate those who belonged, the real psychoanalysts, from those who should be expelled. In recent years, we have come to be far more sensitive to the fact that a false note is introduced into an analysis if interpretations are accepted simply on the basis of professional authority. Indeed, resistance to authority can be seen as an essential aspect of a patient's or a client's developing autonomy. In attempting endlessly to differentiate itself from psychotherapy, psychoanalysis is implicitly claiming a privileged status.
